No safe havens left

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Although I’ve written this article in my head a 100 different times, I’ve avoided writing it on paper because of the controversy it may create. So let me be clear about what this article is NOT. It is not my opinion on the Second Amendment or gun control. It is also not an article about whether teachers should carry guns in school. Instead, it’s an article about how the adults in today’s society are failing our children and what we’re seeing as the consequences of that.

Immediately after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, students rallied together and began making some very big and bold statements. They used social media and their smarts to begin swaying policies and decisions in favor of student safety. They are still a political force today making headlines, influencing the midterm election with their billboards in Arizona and calls for voter registration throughout the country.

While some adults praised the students for their efforts and involvement, others couldn’t understand their need to express themselves or their anger at yet another school shooting. The social media pages of people my age buzzed with either support or disgust, but it was a very hot topic across the generations.

What I saw in the students’ activism, however, was a cry for help from our most vulnerable and under-represented population. As a society, we have taken away every one of our children’s safe havens — schools, churches, neighborhood parks, shopping malls and even our homes — and replaced them with places full of fear and anxiety.

Let’s be honest, red tape on a kindergarten classroom floor should be used to section off different learning areas of the classroom, not to highlight the “safe” zones away from a shooter’s view. And, yes, there are schools even in Indiana that mark all of their classrooms this way. That one example says so loudly and clearly to me that an age of innocence for our children is long gone. Kindergarten is no longer a place to simply learn how to color, read, and count. Instead, we are now teaching our children how to survive at the tender age of 5.

My friends and I often joke about the differences between how we grew up and the way we parent today. We all agree that most of us left our houses in the summer as soon as we got up and we didn’t check in with our mom or dad other than to grab a quick lunch or snack. We came home when the lightning bugs appeared. I’m not saying there wasn’t danger around us then, but as a society we didn’t seem to focus on it. We lived in the here-and-now instead of living in the world of “what if?”

Today, we (and I include myself in this) hover and over-communicate with our children. We make decisions for them about their friends and their activities and in doing so, have stifled their ability to explore and make mistakes. We overshare with them,and we over-prepare for every possible scenario until the next shooter finds a way we didn’t consider. All the while, our children look at red tape on the floor or locked classroom doors and wonder if they’re next instead of focusing on their English and math lessons.

Kim Kile is the director of school counseling at Greenfield-Central High School. Send comments to [email protected].